Changing Tide Under the Blood Moon
by Lassroyale
Summary: The darkness coils within Merlin, consuming him, consuming everything. It always was and it always will be, time and time again.  dark!Merlin, character death, AU


**Changing Tide Under the Blood Moon**

The pregnant moon, her bloated belly heavy with the pale child she incubates, lumbers tiredly across the sky. Feet bare and ankles swollen, she dips her toes into the churning sea. Cold whispers through her veins, secrets folded into the night. The foam swirls beneath the soles of her feet. It washes away the mud of the day and ribbons crimson through the tide; the hour grows close.

The tide swells and changes.

Hunith cries out, the lanterns reflecting off of the sheen of her face as the midwife tells her to push. The light anoints her brow in orange-red glow, a circlet of fire that melts into her hairline. She throws her head back and listens to the voices in her ears, the dark ones that curl and suckle at her breast when she lay alone, her fingers splayed over the child in her belly.

She fears. She loves. She pushes.

A wail pierces the night and the pale child is born beneath a blood moon. 

The child is mad at the sky.

He knows he is special, a king of more than just the pile of dirt that he and Will play on. He feels the pulse of the earth, pushes his ear to the grass, listens. Everything whispers; playful things, terrible things, unbelievable things, that test the limits of the imagination.

But his imagination is limitless, and Merlin wants to fly.

The tree is a giant but Merlin has no fear, he climbs boldly as boughs bend to assist him. The tree has a heartbeat; it beats with his own. Its skin is rough beneath small fingers. Leaves twist and curve to kiss his cheeks as higher and higher he pulls himself. He stands atop the highest bough, rocking like a cradle, down will come baby.

The sun is warm against his face, silent, watchful The wind is carefree and flirtatious, carding sylph-fingers through his hair. The tree's branches rub together and warn him not to jump. The wind, breathy laughter tickling behind his ears, tells him fly.

He jumps.

He falls and falls, air rushing too fast for his lungs to catch, as the ground opens up and swallows him.

Later, Merlin burrows into Hunith's embrace, tears in his eyes, mouth trembling. He has a broken arm, a bruise, and a monstrous anger in his heart. The wind lied; he couldn't fly. He doesn't tell Hunith that his tears aren't from pain, but from his humiliation.

The tree is dead, its branches bare - sharp fingers that scrape desolately at the clouds. They creak, inflamed joints that are old, decayed, and mournful. Hunith, her own eyes moist, knows why; the dark voices rest with Merlin now. Late at night, when children should be sleeping, she watches him murmur to them against the curve of his palm.

The next morning the sky is the color of blood. 

**-VVV-**

Light shines behinds Arthur Pendragon, a personal standard that hurts to look directly into. It burns Merlin to the core of him, makes the darkness curl back on itself. The darkness hisses like acid on stone, a beast cornered, snarling frustration. Against the force of Arthur's light, it hides.

For a while, it is good.

The moon watches, belly again heavy with child, pallid and round against the darkened night sky. She weaves her tapestry. She is careful; one misstep could unravel it all. The shuttle travels back and forth beneath her silvery fingers. The ocean laps at her feet.

She is happy.

The tide changes, warm currents drift through Albion. 

**-VVV-**

Arthur is beneath him. Merlin, features cast too sharply in the pale moonlight, is strange. He doesn't belong here in this world; he is something else, too different to comprehend. He is all shadows and angles, feral, barely chained by skin and bone.

Their song is powerful, heady, Merlin inhales the smell of Arthur's sex. The musky scent devours him. Slowly, from the base of his spine, the darkness unfurls. It fans out like a cape, splashes against the walls, joins the shadows in joyful reunion.

Arthur can't speak, held hostage by the power he feels loosen Merlin's hips as the crashes into him, deeper and deeper. His lust is great, but Merlin, is suddenly terrifying. The darkness fills Merlin's eyes and when he kisses Arthur, it surges down the other's throat.

It rocks them. They are not puzzle pieces that fit together. They are one.

Merlin pushes into Arthur one last time, sealing them together. Their fates darken. Arthur is flooded by power he's never felt. He comes too, a scream ripped from him. His eyes are wet with tears.

The room is filled with sound, darkness breathing hot and sultry against their skin. They coil again, the glide of limbs slick and filthy; they tumble deep into one another.

The loom stops moving.

The moon, once again half of herself, cries in the corner.

The next morning, the sun hides himself behind a screen of clouds. It is dark. 

**-VVV-**

The darkness grows. Something rots the heart of Camelot. Uther Pendragon feels death move through him, watching him in the night. It sits in silent vigil, restless for him, its palms a dry rasp against his sex in the dark.

Something consumes him, a fever that steals moisture, saps strength, and drains vitality. _Merlin_ consumes him, pale nymph, seducing him nightly in memory. The boy dances behind his eyes when he is alone. Uther is hungry. He wants, yearns, cries out for the touch of smooth skin; imagines it will be creamy as milk against his tongue.

Uther runs to the edge of sanity and tosses himself over gladly.

At his bedside, the darkness curled obediently at his feet, Merlin smiles.

Uther babbles to Arthur, delirious, his words cracking frailly against the air. Glass breaks, the sound of the insane dying. Arthur listens sadly. Merlin stands behind him, with his hands curved loosely over his prince's shoulders. The darkness whispers against his lips, purrs softly into the nape of his neck: _Soon it would be a new world._

The sky is starless and in the darkness, Uther Pendragon dies. The moon's eye is barely cracked.

She is blind.

The tide shifts; the water blackens. 

**-VVV-**

Battle cries: the beats of hooves, the thump of war drums, all weave together in beautiful war song. The wind laughs and laughs and Merlin laughs with her. The ground quivers beneath the stomp of Camelot's army, at the head, Arthur shines with all of his former glory. He beckons, fingers twitching in tune to thrum of anticipation, and motions his men forward.

They surge, a wave of steel, pounds of flesh offered willingly for sacrifice. Courage intangible, it threads through their hearts, tight stitches, strings tied, tugging the lambs to slaughter.

The battle flows back and forth. Arthur watches, pleased; the ground is blessed in sweat and blood. Merlin moves next to his king. The darkness swallows the sunlight, it's slung heavy across his shoulders, purring against his neck.

"Finish it," Arthur says.

Merlin unleashes his magic like a plague on the battlefield, coating everything in sight - a living cloud that claws and tears.

Exhilaration fills him as power bleeds inky through his veins; he soars. The pale child finally flies.

The blood moon is low in the sky. Her belly is empty, her womb barren.

The tide climbs onto the shore, then, with a dying burble, recedes.

(The End.) 


End file.
